Student rallies urge marijuana over alcohol

What's a college party without the beer? Safer, says one group of activists called ... SAFER.

The non-profit group Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) aims to educate the public "about the relative harms of the nation’s two most popular recreational drugs: alcohol and marijuana," their Web site states. And on Thursday, California college students will rally to spread the same message.

Students will gather at San Francisco State University at 2 p.m. as part of SAFER's Emerald Initiative, which poses the question: "Why are we driving students to drink?"

The student activists will deliver copies of their Emerald Initiative to the university president's office. It was designed in response to the Amythyst Initiative, which addresses questions about lowering the drinking age in an effort to curb problems associated with alcohol.

The rallies, also planned for the San Diego State and Fullerton College, were set for April because it's National Alcohol Awareness Month. More than 80 colleges rallied on April 1 for the cause but SF State, SDSU and Fullerton were on Spring Break. Partying, no doubt, with some type of mind-altering substance.

Coming off the Colorado Cannabis Convention over the weekend, attorney Rob Corry, a steadfast supporter of medical marijuana, debated state Attorney General John Suthers, a staunch critic of the current medical-marijuana system, at the University of Denver yesterday in what The Denver Post calls a “rhetorical cannabis cage match” watched by law students and medical marijuana supporters.

The debate served to underscore increasingly entrenched divisions over the state’s growing medical marijuana industry and culture, along with gray areas of the law.

Meanwhile, on the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus, administrators are trying to clear up some of the murky issues created by students who are licensed to use marijuana medicinally. Freshman students using medical pot are no longer required to live in dormitories their first year, reports the Daily Camera, although some students believe a better alternative would be to designate smoking areas inside the dorms.

COLUMBIA — Members of Mizzou NORML,  which argues for equal punishment for alcohol and marijuana use, gathered in MU Speakers Circle to rally for Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation's Day of Action.

Students marched together to the chancellor's office to deliver a copy of the "Emerald Initiative" and the book "Marijuana Is Safer: So why are we driving people to drink?" Students hope to receive the chancellor's endorsement of the "Emerald Initiative," Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreations' initiative to open discussion about allowing students to use marijuana.

"It's time our colleges and universities stop teaching students to 'drink responsibly' and start teaching them to 'party responsibly,'" said Kellie Smith, president of Mizzou NORML.

COLUMBIA — In recognition of National Alcohol Awareness Month, college students across the nation are proposing a question: Why not marijuana instead?

The Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation's Nationwide Day of Action on April 1 had students asking universities to stop “driving them to drink and allow them to use marijuana as a safer recreational alternative,” according to a news release from the organization.

Students at Kent State University joined 80 colleges and universities in hopes of promoting marijauna use as a safer alternative to alcohol as part of their "day of action" Thursday.

SAFER(Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation) Executive Director Mason Tvert says that students around the country are taking initiatives to change penalties for pot.

"Students around the country are taking action now, just as they did last week in an effort to educate people about marijuana being safer than alcohol."

April is Alcohol Awareness Month and I found it fitting in Tuesday’s issue of TNH to read an article explaining “drunken etiquette.” It got me thinking: nobody wants find themselves belligerently drunk in front of a UNH police officer, nobody wants to do something stupid that could endanger themselves or people around them but that’s what alcohol does.

Lowering inhibitions and forgetting the problems of the school week just for a night is what college students do best, but what if we could use a substance to “party” that would save us from being tackled on the spot for stumbling on that walk to Wildcat? What if we had a safer way to party that didn’t induce violence, sexual assault or property damage like alcohol does? According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s Task Force on College Drinking, each year the use of alcohol by college students contributes to approximately 1,700 student deaths, 600,000 unintentional student injuries, 695,000 assaults involving students, and 97,000 sexual assaults and date rapes involving students. Fortunately, use of cannabis has never been considered a factor in violent crime or sexual assaults.